Hi all; Chalabi says US soldiers now "sitting ducks":
Postwar Iraq ‘tougher’ than forecast
MSNBC, June 10, 2003
Pentagon adviser: U.S. forced to retool stabilization plans
The task of stabilizing postwar Iraq has proven “tougher and more complex” than the Bush administration foresaw, mainly because of violence and sabotage that seem to be organized by trained forces, a top Pentagon policy adviser said Tuesday.
...
‘SITTING DUCKS’
Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, said Saddam has $1.3 billion in cash taken from the central bank on March 18, is bent on revenge and believes he can “sit it out and get the Americans going.”
Chalabi said Tuesday that Saddam has been seen north of Baghdad and is paying a bounty for every U.S. soldier killed.
“Now, he’s put a price on American soldiers. He will pay bounty for every American soldier killed in Iraq now. This has been spread around in the western part of the country,” Chalabi said in New York City, at an address to the Council on Foreign Relations.
He said the casualty rate for American soldiers “is close to one a day, which is not good.”
The United States has been putting more troops into areas where the killings are taking place, but Chalabi said soldiers in their armored vehicles “are sitting ducks for terrorists.”
...
msnbc.com
P.S.
Note that Chalabi was the guy that provided a lot of the humint to Bush about the fantasy Iraq WMDs, so his observations on what Saddam is doing are probably about as reliable. My own guess is that Saddam is hiding in somebody's basement, and is just trying to stay hidden. And that the Iraqis are shooting at us without anyone needing to pay them squat. Here's a link to how Chalabi was connected into Bush's bad intelligence:
"Of course we talk to Chalabi," Rosenthal said. "If you were in Iraq and weren't talking to Chalabi, I'd wonder if you were doing your job." According to the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh, Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress was a key source of information about weapons for the Pentagon's intelligence unit - information sometimes disputed by the CIA. Chalabi may have been feeding the Times and other news organisations the same disputed information.
smh.com.au
So there you have it, neocons. The same guy you're hanging your hat on for the existence of WMDs is saying that our soldiers are "sitting ducks". So which is it. Is Chalabi full of shit (and Bush blew it by believing him), or are US soldiers sitting ducks? |
